Hello,

i am not sure if this is the right place but i have some suggestions for EKOS.

Sometimes i use my 8" Newton visually and use the Guidescope with attached camera to target objects by plate solving. This works quite well if main scope and guidescope are perfectly aligned. I normally do this manually by targeting a bright star but this is not very exact.
Maybe someone can build a function into EKOS to help with this process? First take an image with the main scope/camera, plate solve and determine the center of view. Then start exposures with the guidescope and plate solve and display the difference between center on main and guide scope in a loop. I would then be able to adjust the position of my guidescope until both scopes are pointing to the same direction.

Maybe a nice addition that could help avoid one problem if guiding through guidescopes:
When autoguiding through a guidescope some setups suffer from e.g. tubus flexing or other effects that shift the axis of main and guide scope during the session. This has - at least for longer exposures - some effect on the guiding precision that cannot be measured through RMS. If the axis of main and guide scope shift you can get elliptical stars even if guiding works with perfecly low RMS.
But: Currently there is no easy way to exactly detect this shifting. Using plate solving with main and guide camera this could be easily checked. Just make exposures with both cameras e.g. near the pole, plate solve and measure the distance between the center of view. Then slew to another position and do it again. Compare both differences and you have a measure for the shift due to mechanical tubus flexing etc.

Both functions could be added by "only" building a nice user interface. The background functionality needed is already in the code (slew, plate solve etc.).

What do others mean? I think this are not really important improvements but they should be quite easy to implement and nice little features for someone.

Ciao, Udo

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